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- Alfred Binet, Binet; Synonyms: Binet; French psychologist remembered for his studies of the intellectual development of children (1857-1911).
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
'Alfred Binet' (July 8, 1857 – October 18, 1911), French psychologist and
inventor of the first usable intelligence test, the basis of today's IQ test.
Born in Nice, Binet was a French psychologist who published the first modern
intelligence test, the Binet-Simon intelligence scale, in 1905. His principal
goal was to identify students who needed special help in coping with the school
curriculum. Along with his collaborator Théodore Simon, Binet published
revisions of his intelligence scale in 1908 and 1911, the last appearing just
before his untimely death. A further refinement of the Binet-Simon scale was
published in 1916 by Lewis M. Terman, from Stanford University, who incorporated
William Stern's proposal that an individual's intelligence level be measured as
an (I.Q.). Terman's test, which he named the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale
formed the basis for one of the modern intelligence tests still commonly used
today. They are all colloquially known as IQ tests. He was the only child of a
physician father and an artist mother. His parents separated when he was very
young and he was raised by his mother who went with him to Paris when he was 15,
so he could attend a famous law school there. Binet received his license to
practice law in 1878 and then decided to follow the family tradition of
medicine. Nevertheless, his interest in psychology became more important than
finishing his medical studies.
Reading books by Charles Darwin, Alexander Bain and others, turned Binet into
somewhat of a self-taught psychologist. Introverted and a loner, this self-
educating suited him. What he did not realize was that he would later pay,
because of what he was deprived of by not attending a University and formally
studying psychology.
In 1883, years of unaccompanied study ended when Binet was introduced to Charles
Fere, who introduced him to Jean Charcot, the director of a clinic called La
Salpetriere. Charcot became his mentor and in turn, Binet accepted a job offer
at the clinic. During his seven years there, any and every of Charcot's views
were accepted unconditionally by Binet. This of course, was where he could have
used the interactions with others and training in critical thinking that a
University education provided.
Binet and his coworker Fere discovered what they called transfer and they also
recognized perceptual and emotional polarization. Binet and Fere thought their
findings were a phenomena and of utmost importance. After investigations by
many, the two men were forced to admit that they were wrong about their concepts
of transfer and polarization. Basically, their patients had known what was
expected, what was supposed to happen, and so they simply assented. Binet had
risked everything on his experiment and its results, and this failure took a
toll on him.
In 1890, Binet resigned from La Salpetriere and never mentioned the place or its
director again. His interests then turned toward the development of his
children, Madeleine and Alice, who were two years apart. This research
corresponds with that done by Jean Piaget just a short time later, regarding the
development of cognition in children.
A job presented itself for Binet in 1891 at the Laboratory of Physiological
Psychology at the Sorbonne. He worked for a year without pay and by 1894, he
took over as the director. This was a position that Binet held until his death,
and it enabled him to pursue his studies on mental processes. During this time
he also served as the director and editor-in-chief of the number one French
journal of psychology, L'Annee psychologique.
In 1899, Binet was asked to be a member of the Free Society for the
Psychological Study of the Child. French education changed profusely during the
end of the nineteenth century, because of a law that passed which made it
mandatory for children ages six to fourteen to attend school. This group to
which Binet became a member hoped to begin studying children in a scientific
manner. Binet and many other members of the society were appointed to the
Commission for the Retarded. The question became "What should be the test given
to children thought to possibly have learning disabilities, that might place
them in a special classroom?" Binet made it his problem to establish the
differences that separate the normal child from the abnormal, and to measure
such differences. L'Etude experimentale de l'intelligence (Experimental Studies
of Intelligence) was the book he used to describe his methods and it was
published in 1903.
Development of more tests and investigations began soon after the book, with the
help of a young medical student named Theodore Simon. Simon had nominated
himself a few years before as Binet's research assistant and worked with him on
the intelligence tests that Binet is known for, which share Simon's name as
well. In 1905, a new test for measuring intelligence was introduced and simply
called the Binet-Simon scale. In 1908, they revised the scale, dropping,
modifying, and adding tests and also arranging them according to age levels from
three to thirteen.
Binet published the third version of the Binet-Simon scale right before he died
in 1911, but it was still unfinished. If it were not for his early death, Binet
surely would have continued to revise the scale. Still, the Binet-Simon scale
was and is hugely popular around the world, mainly because it is easy to give
and fairly brief.
Since his death, many people in many ways have honored Binet, but two of these
stand out. In 1917, the Free Society for the Psychological Study of the Child,
to whom Binet became a member in 1899 and which prompted his development of the
intelligence tests, changed their name to La Societe Alfred Binet, in memory of
the renowned psychologist. The second honor was not until 1984, when the journal
Science 84 picked the Binet-Simon scale, as one of twenty of this century's most
significant developments or discoveries.
He studied sexual behavior, coining the term erotic fetishism to describe
individuals whose sexual interests in nonhuman objects, such as articles of
clothing. He also studied abilities of
Valentine Dencausse, the most famous chiromancer in Paris in those days.
* This article uses material from Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License
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